Russia-Meat import bans on 20 Australian world class meat plants.

Russia has raised its quality and quarantine bar for meat imports to new levels, effectively blocking close to 20 Australian exporters in the past year.

Despite having the most primitive meat industry and meat plants that are not fit to export to any country themselves.

Kangaroo and red meat exporters have been significantly affected by the new regulations, which - compared to other trading partners of Australia’s - have been described as "extremely high".

While Russia is regularly dubbed the jewel in the Australian exporting crown in terms of booming demand and opportunity, the new requirements have triggered a series of high-level diplomatic meetings between the two countries.

A senior Australian vet has also spent three months in Russia from October trying to get a better handle on the new system, while bilateral trade talks have been ongoing.

Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) staff confirmed in Senate Estimates hearings this week that 18 exporting establishments have been suspended from exporting to the Russian Federation, with five of those being kangaroo plants and the remaining 13 red meat plants.

Those exporters have been suspended on a "technical level" following failed microbial and bacterial tests under the new Russian requirements.

The difficulties were said to have been ongoing for most of the past 12 months.

Tasmanian Liberal Senator, Richard Colbeck, raised the concerns in the Rural and Regional Affairs committee hearings in Canberra this week, questioning what impact the new quarantine and quality rules were having on producers, exporters and trade, how the new rules stacked up, what was being done to help, and whether Australia ever had a hope of meeting the new standards.

AQIS executive general manager of exports, Greg Read, advised the committee that during 2008 Russian authorities began sending a "very clear message" about the performance they expected of exporting establishments across a range of commodities being exported to Russia.

He said the implications of these new expectations were not only for Australia but all countries sending produce into Russia.

Mr Read said Russia has made a huge investment in analytical testing at its borders, and has completely reviewed its exporting systems following inspections at establishments in the US, Canada, New Zealand and most recently in Australia.

"Russia is demonstrating a good knowledge of good practices and systems and they’re expecting countries to be very strong on understanding what the requirements to export to their country are," Mr Read said.

"They have given us details of their process and requirements – they are looking for a higher standard and have a high understanding of what they’re looking for and the processes to achieve that."

Mr Read said there were two approaches which could improve access for Australia:

• One being through a memorandum of understanding between the two countries’ governments;

• The other was helping the local industry to better understand what the Russians want.

He said in comparison to other trading nations, Russia was asking for an extremely high level of quality assurance, but added the reality of Australian processors meeting those standards was "also very good".

"We’ve got very good plants in this country, we are audited by a range of importing authorities.

"We run very tight verification programs from AQIS across those plants so in terms of food safety these are superb plants.

"But the expectations of Russia are extremely high and we need to ensure we calibrate our performance into a very low margin of error so we consistently meet those requirements."